Invisible Stalker

No one knows a stalker's true shape. On the Prime Material, Astral and Ethereal planes it is only a faint ripple, like heat shimmer over a road, though on the Astral and Ethereal its outline is dimly visible. It understands human common speech but cannot speak it, using a language of howling, gusting wind.

The stalker turns the air itself into a weapon, whipping a violent vortex around one target on its plane for 4d4 (4-16) points of damage. Its invisibility imposes a -6 penalty on its chosen victims' surprise rolls, and foes unable to see or detect the invisible attack it at -2. It can only be slain on its native plane of Air; elsewhere, once damage exceeds its hit points, it is flung home.

Every stalker on the Prime Material was conjured by a wizard and must obey until its job is done or it is driven home. It never loses a trail under a day old, and ordered to attack it fights furiously until destroyed or told to stop. Short, easy chores amuse it, but assignments of a week or more push it to warp its instructions, so such orders must be worded carefully and given by a powerful wizard. Each day of servitude carries a cumulative 1% chance it finds a way to pervert the command and escape; told to 'keep me safe from all harm', it might carry its master to the plane of Air and hide him there. With no loophole, it keeps serving. At home it is assumed to live much like an air elemental.

Stalkers keep grudges. Those overworked, endangered or nearly killed by humanoids come to distrust or hate them, while newcomers and those with easy service are friendlier, and these feelings color meetings with humanoid travelers on the plane of Air. Anyone who once befriended a stalker finds that plane far less dangerous.

It obeys only its actual summoner, and few wizards will summon one for a client. Some mercenary mages scribe the conjuration onto scrolls usable by others, sold for 5,000-10,000 gp; the smallest misstep in reading one can doom the user.